Alison Dyke

Alison came to work with SEI in 2011 following over ten years as an independent research and policy consultant working in the fields of community woodlands and wild harvests.

Alison is a political ecologist working on nature-society relations and works across a broad range of environmental subject areas: bringing non humans into research and decision making processes in governance of trees and water; and investigating the impact that these relationships have on human and non-human health and well-being.  In several projects, she has explored how these relationships are mediated by human values. She particularly focuses on the social and cultural values associated with trees, building understanding of how these values are dynamic in relation to risk (funded by DEFRA), what metrics might be used to measure different types of value (again funded by DEFRA) and how these values influence land managers’ decision making (funded by NERC).

She has previously worked as an independent researcher and consultant on participative adaptive management issues relating to forestry for clients such as local enterprise agencies, Forest Research, The Forestry Commission and Scottish Natural Heritage and also for worked for Reforesting Scotland on its ‘Wild Harvests’ project

She gained a PhD in Political Ecology from the University of Glasgow in 2006 titled ‘The Practice, Politics and Ecology of Non Timber Forest Products in Scotland’. She also has an MSc in Forest Science from the University of Edinburgh and an undergraduate degree in Geography from the University of Glasgow.

Since joining SEI Alison has developed research on environmental behaviours including citizen science, public engagement and governance aspects of plant health and environmental behaviour change in relation to housing.